It came to my attention that Dr. Sophie Freud, granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, is speaking today on Grand Valley State University's campus. I mention this because, in high school, I had an awesome T-shirt with Freud's face on it, tinted pink, with the words Pink Freud underneath. Get it? Which leads me to this week's desert-island pick.

Pink Floyd, "Animals" (1977)
The endurance of Pink Floyd is a topic of great interest to people who follow music. Because while the labels scramble to protect their bottom lines, "The Wall" and "Dark Side of the Moon" will continue to sell by the truckload, always revealing their pleasures in smoky basements to new generations of kids.

Like many a Midwestern teenager, I went through a rather intense Pink Floyd phase early in college, somehow convinced the art-rock symphonies of the band's later catalog held the answers to life's biggest questions. (I was also convinced that if I didn't wear my contact lenses, my other senses would become stronger in compensation, but never mind. It was a weird time.)

By now, I've mostly grown out of Floyd, and the records I find most interesting in retrospect are the strange, more obviously drug-induced, pre-"Dark Side" albums. However, among the band's later and more popular work, "Animals" has always been my favorite.

Though he would later create a concept album based mainly on his contempt for humanity ("The Wall"), "Animals" is where bandleader Roger Waters' disconcerting level of misanthropy revealed itself. Consider this lyrical passage from the 17-minute opus "Dogs":

"You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder / You know it's going to get harder and harder and harder as you get older / And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south / Hide your head in the sand / Just another sand old man / All alone and dying of cancer."

Jeez, Roger. I've always wondered, then, why there was such an adversarial relationship between art-rock and punk in the late 1970s (best exemplified by Johnny Rotten's famous "I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt). There's just as much, if not more, hatred and bile on this record than on anything the Sex Pistols ever produced.

There are three main songs on the album, and each uses a barnyard animal ("Dogs," "Pigs," "Sheep") as a metaphor for mankind. The tracks are long, spacious, dynamic and thrilling, defiantly angry, noncommercial and idiosyncratic. Each is highlighted by guitar work that demonstrates David Gilmour's status as the best axeman of his generation.

With the release of "The Wall" a few years later, Pink Floyd would become a bit of a circus act, and would eventually collapse under its own weight. But the quality of its best work can't be ignored, even by prog-averse snobs such as myself.